In ancient times, there were no satellites, how to know how many soldiers and horses the other side

It is generally said on TV: "General Qiqi, according to the spies to report that the other party is leading an army of xx thousand to attack us".

There are soldiers to investigate, and each country has its own spy personnel, and whenever something happens, they will report it immediately.

In ancient times, there was a profession called fine work.

Send your own ghosts and gods to check,

Guess based on the information collected.

There are special signs, and the discerning people of the army at that time know it at a glance!

You can count the grain transport teams in the rear, and you can also know how many troops it will be supplied to by looking at the frequency and quantity.

It is to look at the level and number of generals of the other party, because in each dynasty, the army establishment is different. You can also look at the official positions of local generals, because different official positions lead different people.

There are as many soldiers as there are to eat, more waste, less hunger, and how many meals can be cooked in a pot and a stove are as large as the quantity, so when it is time to eat, you will know how many people there are in many ways by counting the number of cooking smoke.

In fact, the method is also simple, that is, send someone to see it! That's right, this is the Scout.

Although backward in ancient times, fighting a war is definitely not a blind fight, scouts are the eyes of the army, whether they are marching or stationed, scouts will never be broken. Therefore, scouting the opponent is in **, and how many people are is the basic job of the scout.

In order to get an accurate number, the scouts not only had to use a variety of methods, but also captured as many captives as possible in order to torture them for the information they wanted.

Look at the stationing. Because in ancient times, in terms of the arrangement of troops, the size of the camp, and the banner of the generals, everyone followed the same set of scale.

Many ancient generals will judge how many people there are according to the number of pots and stoves on the other side, and Pang Juan, the commander of Wei, thought that Qi had fewer soldiers and horses because Sun Bin suddenly reduced the stove, so he rashly pursued, and ended in a fiasco.

Ancient armies also had a fixed formation, and each formation also had its own flag, so scouts only needed to count how many flags there were, how many establishments, and it could also be as large as determining the number of opponents.

Some skilled people can know the size of the opponent just by looking at the sparse size of the opponent's station.

In ancient times, there were four main ways to judge how many soldiers and horses the enemy came.

1. Judging by the sound of footsteps and horses' hooves; Clause.

2. Judge by sending people to inquire about intelligence; Clause.

3. Judging by the area of camping; Clause.

Fourth, judge by the arrangement of the enemy's army.

First, judge by the sound of footsteps and horses' hoovesIn ancient times, the most common way to judge the enemy's military horses was to listen to the sound of footsteps and horses' hooves。Generally speaking, when marching and fighting in ancient times, you only need to know the approximate number of opponents, not the exact number, so you can roughly judge the difference between the number of enemies and your own based on the volume of footsteps and horses' hooves.

Second, by sending people to inquire about intelligence, secondly, the number of enemy horses can also be known by "exploring" intelligence, and the number obtained by this method is relatively accurate. When fighting, the battle is usually relatively large, so it is easy to find out the number of troops in the stages from preparation to departure to camping. However, it is precisely for this reason that ancient people hardly did anything about the number of troops when they fought wars.

3. Judging by the area of camping; Judging the number of soldiers and horses by the area of the camp is also a common way to fight in ancient times, and the data obtained by this method is also relatively accurate。In ancient times, when marching and fighting, they would camp and the number of soldiers in each camp was almost fixed, so the ancients could roughly calculate the number of soldiers and horses of the enemy by the area where the enemy was camped. In "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", Lu Xun learned about the number of soldiers and horses in Liu Bei's army in this way.

Fourth, judge the final by the arrangement of the enemy's armyIn ancient times, many military advisors could calculate how many men and horses the enemy would send based on the enemy's army arrangement. Generally speaking, the number of soldiers and horses in one camp is almost known to other camps, so when fighting a war, you can calculate a little, subtract the total number of soldiers left in the city, and then subtract the number of soldiers in other places, you can get the maximum number of soldiers and horses that the enemy can appear in this battle.

Generally, the number of soldiers and horses can be judged by looking at the number of tents stationed by the enemy, and on the other hand, it can also be judged by the level of the opponent's leader.

In ancient times, there were scouts, and the enemy soldiers and horses would set up camp when they came, and the scouts could judge the number of soldiers and horses from the camp situation and the amount of food and grass, and could estimate the approximate number.

I think they all heard and felt, judging the number of people based on the amplitude of the vibration of the ground and the sound of the horse's hooves hitting the ground, although not very accurate, but about the same.

In ancient times, wars would send spies to find out how many people there were, and they would also send people to the enemy's castle towers to spread the word.

In ancient times, when wars were fought, it was usually grain and grass that were in place. The issue of eating is very important, so in ancient times, it was judged by how many stoves the other party dug up.

There were no satellites in ancient times, and there were no cameras in ancient times. Therefore, the ancients would send spies to check on the vicinity of the enemy army, and when they asked, they would know the approximate situation, and they would report back to the general.

In ancient times, there were no satellites, so how could we know how many soldiers and horses the other side had come when we were fighting? Like a book: know yourself and know your opponent, invincible.

There are several ways to determine how many troops and horses the enemy has dispatched. One, a rough judgment by the sound of footsteps and horses' hooves. Second, by sending people to infiltrate the enemy to spy on intelligence, we can obtain more accurate troops.

Third, judge by the area of the enemy's camp. Fourth, judge by the arrangement of the enemy's army.

In ancient times, there were special signal leaders who went to the front line to explore the way, so as to know how many people there were on the other side and what they were.

There are many ways to do this, and you can judge it by looking at the way you look at the stove. In ancient times, it was generally four people in one stove, so the number of people on the other side could be judged by the number of pots and stoves.

Another reason is that the ancient wars were famous, and they would find a reason to start a war. And revealing the number of their own troops before the war is to show their own fairness, but as time goes by, these numbers slowly become untrue. At that time, Cao Cao shouted for a million troops to come, but in the end it was only half of the actual number.

And some people are more honest, and the number he reports is still true and reliable, so he knows how many people there are on the other side. But in war, most of the situations are judged by their own excellent generals based on the situation on the spot. If you surrender without a fight, you will have a greater chance of winning after getting the opponent's hole cards.

In the past, in ancient wars, there would usually be spies who went to the opposing camp to inquire about the military situation, so even if there were no satellites, you could know how many soldiers and horses the other side had.

In ancient times, there were spies in wars, and spies would go to the enemy camp to inquire about news and spy on military intelligence, so people in ancient times could know a lot of information without satellites.

Some attackers will directly tell the enemy their own numbers to deter the enemy, and regardless of whether there is a false report or not, there is always intelligence reconnaissance and logistical support on the battlefield.

There will be spies who will secretly know how many soldiers and horses the other party has, not only the number of people, but also the state of the enemy's military food reserves.

Because there are spies, these spies do not necessarily work in the confidential department, and it is possible that they are just ordinary soldiers. Although they don't have access to secrets, they can at least figure out how many people there are in the army.

According to the information of the scouts, the size of the opponent's camp, the scale of grain and grass supplies, the situation of the opponent's troops on the battlefield, and the opponent's pit after pulling out, so as to judge the number of opponents.

In ancient times, there was also a kind of scout, called scouts, who specialized in detecting the enemy's situation and collecting enemy intelligence.

The army is always accompanied by a certain number of scouts, who are responsible for detecting the enemy's situation, detecting the enemy's movements, and clearing all obstacles to the advance of the army.

Although there were no satellites in ancient times, there were spies, and the usual information would be collected through spies, and the number of people on the other side would be known through spies.

Some of them were blown out, such as Cao Cao's 800,000 people in the Battle of Chibi, which actually only brought more than 100,000, and the peasants saw it, and then they would say according to their own feelings, for example, the 2w people on the opposite side of the peasants must have 100,000 when they saw Wuyang, and these were almost blown out, and then the scouts could probably analyze the number of people according to the scale, but the difference was still very large, and the difference was about 20%-50%.

Many ancient generals would judge how many people there were based on the number of pots and stoves on the other side.

Of course, I looked at it with my eyes, and sent someone to take a look at it secretly.

But in most wars, the side with more soldiers and horses often has an absolute advantage.

Should you judge how many soldiers the opponent has by hearing?

In each dynasty, the army was different. It can also look at the official positions of local generals.

Different official positions lead different people.

In ancient times, it would be judged how many people there were based on the number of pots and stoves on the other side.

The first and easiest way is for the enemy to report their homeYou must know that ancient people also understood the role of propaganda, and when they were fighting, they would generally exaggerate the strength of their own side in order to disturb the enemy's morale. Just imagine that in a war, I revealed that I had an army of 500,000, and when the enemy heard the news, he must have panicked, after all, I didn't have so many people, so on the battlefield in ancient times, the two armies would report their numbers before the war.

The second method is to estimate the opponent's number through the opponent's arrangementFor example, in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, when the two armies faced each other, they basically wouldn't play any tricks on you, how many squares I had, and how many people in each phalanx were numbers on the surface, as long as the scouts sent out counted the number of the phalanx with a little dim sum, the number of people in that place would be on the paper, and you would know very clearly.

The third method is to determine the number of enemies by using their grain and grass, You must know that on the battlefield, how much food each soldier eats at each meal is fixed, it can be said that it will only give you less food, not more for you, so from the amount of grain and grass, you can also estimate the maximum number of people on the other side, but sometimes this method of estimating the number of people is not very accurate, and it also requires good timing. After all, it is impossible for people to tell you where the grain and grass are, so it can be said that this is a military secret, so you can only use this method through follow-up exploration and luck to meet the other party's grain and grass.

There are many other methods, I will not list them here, and if you are interested, you can learn about the historical facts in this regard.

Now there are satellites, and I don't know how many people there are on the other side, so it's okay to roughly estimate.

I think the other party's people are just a guess, and there are no specific numbers.

It should all be guesswork, not an exact number.

At that time, the people were also very talented, and they knew the number of people who lost the party by looking at the enemy's stove.